Michael Scott Magliolo

Victims

2 convictions - Donna N. Bacot in Nashville, for which he received life plus fifty years, and Ida Mae Bladen in Cincinnati, fifteen years to life. He confessed to more than ten killings and later claimed twelve, but named none to investigators and no further charge has been brought; published estimates of his total range from three to twelve. A man he is said to have killed in Louisiana, and the death of his own half-brother, are attributed to him without charge

Years active

1977 - 1991

Location

Tennessee, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Arkansas, USA

Method

Not recorded

Status

A McDonald's manager from Texas who was not a trucker himself: he hitched rides with long-haul drivers on his days off, working as a "thumper" loading and unloading, and killed strangers in the places they took him. He used more than twenty-five aliases. In September 1991 he killed Ida Mae Bladen, 30, at the Dennison Hotel on Vine Street in Cincinnati; a week later he killed Donna N. Bacot at the Esquire Motel in Nashville, having met her at a bar where she worked under the name "Terry". Nashville detective Pat Postiglione linked the two through a fingerprint left at the Ohio scene and the behaviour of a false name on a motel registry, then cold-called more than a hundred police departments looking for the same method. A drink-driving arrest in Texas identified "Terry Campbell" as Magliolo, and detectives from both cities travelled to Dallas to interview him. He was sentenced in Tennessee on SEPTEMBER 14, 1992 to life imprisonment plus fifty years for the assault and murder of Donna Bacot, and in Ohio IN 1993 to fifteen years to life for the murder of Ida Mae Bladen. He confessed to more than ten killings after his arrest and later told reporters he had killed twelve, but ADMITTED NO FURTHER MURDERS TO LAW ENFORCEMENT and none has been charged. He is listed on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry.

Michael Scott Magliolo was born on July 8, 1960 and moved between Tennessee, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Arkansas.

He was sentenced in Tennessee to life imprisonment plus fifty years, and in Ohio to fifteen years to life in 1993. Both cases concerned the rape and killing of young women.

He was described as having raped and murdered at least ten women across those six states between 1977 and 1991, and detectives from several jurisdictions interviewed him. No further charge resulted. He was also suspected of killing his own half-brother, which was not in the earlier version of this entry.

So the range of two to ten and more is two convictions set against a larger figure that was never tested. The count here follows the convictions.

This entry is short because the source is short. The whole of it is a two-sentence summary and a coding block from Michael Newton's encyclopaedia. No victim is named, no individual killing is dated or placed, the method is given as unknown, and there is no account of either trial. The Tennessee sentence is dated September 14, 1992 in the field table and 1993 in the disposition line, and nothing resolves that. Rather than fill the gaps with what comparable cases supply, the entry states what is known and stops.